July 3, 2001

Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside the Chinese embassy and consulates across Canada on Tuesday to protest the alleged torture deaths of 15 women at a labour camp in China's Heilongjiang province last month.

The group said in a release that news of the "spate of violence" at the Wanjia labour camp in Harbin City leaked out despite the fact guards and other staff were detained after the incident.

They were forced to surrender cell phones and pagers, and telephone lines to the camp were cut, the group said.

Camp officials apparently attributed the incident to a mass suicide. The incident is believed to have occurred on or around June 20.

"People don't know exactly what happened," said Grace Wollensak, an Ottawa-based practitioner who came to Canada from China 11 years ago. "But at least one body was seen by her family and they saw the wounds and bruises all over her body. In other cases, the families only received the ashes. They didn't let them see the bodies."

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